floccinaucinihilipilification: The Blog

I’m testing the Facebook “Notes” app, and its ability to import entries from my blog.

I’ve disabled the twitter tools plugin, so there won’t be anymore tweets showing up here. I did this for two reasons, first I could not get it to play nice with the wp-mediawiki plugin, and second I have my tweets updating my facebook status, which is probably more useful for more people.

I saw Jenny McCarthy on Canada AM this morning. I was hoping that Canada AM would have interview with an actual scientist or medical doctor (perhaps Dr. Shapiro) to explain the scientific consensus that there is no link between autism and vaccinations. Vaccines are a safe and effective way to protect people from diseases. Leaving the general public with the impression that there could be a link between vaccinations and autism will lead to a lowered vaccination rate and an thus increased likelihood for outbreaks of dangerous diseases.

The anti-vaccinationists arguments are quite weak. One argument that Ms McCarthy put forward was the increasing number of children with Autism, however this statement is incorrect. There is an increase in the number of reported cases Autism Spectrum Disorder. The reason for this increase has an explanation. First the definition of Autism was widened to Autism Spectrum disorder, which inherently increased the number of individuals that are covered by the new definition. Second, as the awareness of Autism Spectrum Disorder increases (especially among those who work with children) the number of individuals diagnosed with A.S.D has increased, but that does not mean there is an change in the total number of individuals with A.S.D. Many cases would have gone undiagnosed in the past, especially given the widened definition of A.S.D. which includes individuals with less severe symptoms.

For more information please see these articles:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=95
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=194
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=9

These are taken from a blog site run by scientists and medical doctors. The articles generally include references to scientific literature to back up their statements.

I hope you take the time to read these links and consider the harm that CTV and Canada AM could be responsible for if you do not allow the scientific consensus to be presented.

Thanks for your time

Darin Ohashi

The Canadian government has tabled its DMCA rip off. Learning nothing from the host of problems created in the United States of America with the original DMCA, the Canadian version is, apparently
worse.

For those unfamiliar with the DMCA, it makes breaking copy protection a crime. The problem with this is that it allows copyright holders to control how you can use the media you have legally purchased. This allows them to trump fair dealing (what we Canadians call fair use) by slapping any pathetic excuse for copy protection on the media you buy.

In today’s world, this makes copying a DVD to your hard drive (so you could watch it on a plane or an iPod) a crime. It would also be illegal to rip copy protected cds to mp3. In the end, this allows copyright holders to force you to buy their products multiple times, once for each device you want to use it on.

The DMCA has been a disaster in the USA. The music industry has realized that copy protection is a dead end. For both of these reasons it is very surprising that the government has decided to introduce this kind of legislation.

This is a fight over your rights in the digital age.

Just say no to C-61

There is a very interesting article at the Ottawa Skeptics site detailing the regulatory framework, currently in place for Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicines (SCAM). This is background information to help understand the proposed changes in Bill C-51.

There are a few interesting tidbits. Most interestingly, are the rules which allow weasel words when making statements that sound like efficacy claims.

For example:

“traditional use”: All this means is the there have been 50 or more years of the product being used for the claimed reason. Such a claim falls squarely under the Argument from Antiquity fallacy. Bloodlettings were traditionally used for thousands of years. However this does not mean that those who received the treatments were helped by them.

Homeopathic: Although homeopathic is one of the least sensible types of SCAM, Health Canada provides a way for homeopaths to make claims about their products. The claims must describe what they are “intended to address” not that they “can do”. Keeps them honest, but wording is very misleading.

To me, the interesting thing about these two claims is that instead of saying “these therapies work”, they say “other people think these therapies work”.

There are a few others, but hopefully you are already aware of these; “reduces risk”, “maintains”, “supports”, “promotes”, etc. Although it is not obvious what evidence, if any, is necessary to make such a claim.

In the end, our comprehension skills must be used when evaluating these claims. Do they actually say the therapy works, or do they claim something that sounds similar, but in the end is very different?

I am testing using scribe fire https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730 to post a blog entry.